Saudi Arabia and India have formed a new joint venture to build a rice distribution hub in Dubai to link Indian production to consumers in Middle East, Arab News reported. Prince Mishaal bin Abdullah bin Turki and global private investor V Raman Kumar have formed the joint venture with India’s rice producer, LEAF India (Lakshmi Energy and Foods), to create West Asia and North Africa region’s largest […]
Citigroup Inc said on Friday that it has discovered at least $400 million in fraudulent loans in its Mexico subsidiary and said employees may have been in on the crime. The bank wrote down bogus loans to a company whose assets Mexican law enforcement officials have now seized. Citigroup’s 2013 profit fell by $235 million to $13.67 billion after the write-down. Citigroup Chief Executive Officer Michael Corbat […]
China’s yuan surpassed the Swiss franc to become the seventh most-used world payments currency in January, global transaction services organization SWIFT said on Thursday. With a market share of 1.39 percent, the yuan remained one of the top 10 most-used currencies for payments worldwide for the third consecutive month. It ranked eighth in December. Yuan payments increased by 30.6 percent while the growth for all payment currencies […]
The ruling Congress party, which surveys suggest will be ousted from power in elections due by May, called on Wednesday for opinion polls to be banned during the campaign after a TV news report alleged survey data was routinely manipulated. The News Express channel said a “sting operation” using hidden cameras had exposed malpractices by a clutch of polling agencies that included fudging numbers at the behest […]
Patterns of domestic consumption of energy are set to change radically with the emergence of important energy challenges with economic and environmental implications across the GCC, according to a paper titled EU-GCC Renewable Energy Policy Cooperation – Exploring Opportunities, published by the Gulf Research Centre. The paper provides an analysis of the existing status of renewable energy in the GCC, specifically highlighting ongoing initiatives, future opportunities, and […]
Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN) helped American customers hide as much as $10 billion in assets from the Internal Revenue Service, more than double the amount previously known, according to a U.S. Senate committee. A report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations criticized the Zurich-based bank for failing to discipline any senior executives in the face of widespread tax evasion fostered by 1,800 Credit Suisse employees […]
Gold and silver rose to 16-week highs in New York on speculation that weakening U.S. growth and turmoil in Ukraine will boost demand for the precious metals as a haven. Economic activity in the U.S., as measured by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s national index, for January was at minus 0.39, compared with analysts’ median estimate of minus 0.2. A below-zero reading indicates below-trend growth. Ukraine’s […]
JPMorgan Chase & Co. says investors should buy record-low yielding sukuk from Dubai-based port operator DP World Ltd. (DPW) and Jebel Ali Free Zone Authority FZE before credit ratings improve. The yield on DP World’s $1.5 billion Islamic bonds due July 2017 slid 61 basis points this year to 2.6 percent at 2:22 p.m. in Dubai, the lowest level since they were sold in 2007. The yield […]
India’s best-performing equity fund in the past five years is buying consumer companies, lured by revenue growth more than three times faster than the broader market even as rival money managers sell the stocks. R. Srinivasan, who runs the $200 million SBI Magnum Emerging Businesses Fund (MAGEMBG), owns shares of Page Industries Ltd. (PAG), which sells Jockey International Inc.’s undergarments, Redington (India) Ltd., a distributor of Apple […]
Indian central bank Governor Raghuram Rajan warned that inflation remained the biggest threat to growth, diverging from the nation’s finance chief, who highlighted diminishing price pressures. A developing economy like India that is seeking higher growth rates can tolerate higher inflation than advanced nations, Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said in an interview in Sydney, where he was attending the Group of 20 meetings with Rajan. Chidambaram, who […]
BuzzFeed has come a long way from cat lists. This month one of its journalists was on the ground in Kiev reporting on the crisis in Ukraine, and last December it published an in-depth article on a Chinese dissident living in Harlem, New York. The kittens haven’t disappeared, but these days there is serious journalism as well. When Facebook Inc tweaked its News Feed filters in December […]
|By Ole Hansen| Commodities showing strong gains for a third week with positive performances seen across all sectors, not least agriculture where coffee and sugar were strong performers followed by precious metals. Growth-dependent commodities such as energy and industrial metals also showed a positive return but were held back by another decline to a seven-month low in Chinese manufacturing confidence. Adverse weather across the Americas continues to […]
Rating agency Fitch sees the spillover from the strengthening Dubai economy, among other factors, to keep Abu Dhabi growth at 4-5 percent over the next two years. The other factors include high government spending and fruition of several major projects. Fitch Ratings has affirmed Abu Dhabi’s Long-term foreign and local currency IDRs at ‘AA’ with Stable Outlooks. The issue ratings on Abu Dhabi’s senior unsecured foreign and […]
Facebook Inc will buy fast-growing mobile-messaging startup WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock in a landmark deal that places the world’s largest social network closer to the heart of mobile communications and may bring younger users into the fold. The transaction involves $4 billion in cash, $12 billion in stock and $3 billion in restricted stock that vests over several years. The WhatsApp deal is […]
TASWEEK Real Estate Development and Marketing PJSC – an advisor and solutions provider serving the real estate markets, has adopted a new organizational structure to manage the positive growth in the UAE real estate sector, driven by the increasing confidence and heightened optimism among the investors and buyers in the country. The restructuring in its organizational structure comes amidst the TASWEEK study which revealed that the real […]
For years, Abu Dhabi’s real estate market has paled next to its more dynamic, glamorous rival in neighbouring Dubai. But that may be changing as Abu Dhabi engineers a market recovery that could attract billions of dollars of fresh foreign investment. Real estate prices in Dubai jumped over 20 percent last year, analysts estimate, as the emirate rebounded from a crash in 2008-2010 which slashed prices by […]
Du, the United Arab Emirates’ second biggest telecoms operator, expects further growth in the business due to a buoyant local economy, its chief executive said after reporting a rise in revenue and a better than expected fourth-quarter profit on Tuesday. Du expanded rapidly after ending Etisalat’s domestic monopoly in 2007 to claim 46.4 percent of mobile subscribers as of Sept. 30, the most recently available data. However, […]
High energy price volatility has for the first time replaced global climate framework as the top critical uncertainty driving the world energy agenda, according to the 2014 World Energy Issues Monitor, released by the World Energy Council (WEC). Global climate framework uncertainty, while still a key issue, is now perceived by energy leaders to have less impact than in the previous three years of the study. Meanwhile, […]
Abu Dhabi’s new financial free zone has hired a former executive from neighbouring Dubai’s financial centre to spearhead its growth. Jan Bladen will be executive adviser and programme leader at Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), a full-service financial zone which the wealthy emirate is building on an island near its downtown area, the ADGM said in a statement on Tuesday. From 2005 until late last year, Bladen […]
Global stocks erased their losses for the year as growing confidence in the U.S. economy and a rally in emerging markets restored $3 trillion of value. The MSCI All-Country World Index advanced for a ninth straight day yesterday, lifting the value of world equities to $62.1 trillion from this year’s low of about $59 trillion on Feb. 4, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The gauge of developed […]
The two most-accurate gold forecasters are holding to their bearish forecasts for 2014 even after the metal posted its best start to a year since 1983. Futures rose 9.7 percent in 2014 through Feb. 14, rebounding from the biggest annual drop in three decades, and reached a three-month high. Holdings in exchange-traded products backed by bullion increased by 3.2 metric tons last week, the most since December […]
A widening probe of the foreign-exchange market is roiling an industry already under pressure to reduce costs as computer platforms displace human traders. Electronic dealing, which accounted for 66 percent of all currency transactions in 2013 and 20 percent in 2001, will increase to 76 percent within five years, according to Aite Group LLC, a Boston-based consulting firm that reviewed Bank for International Settlements data. About 81 […]
|By Steen Jakobsen|The negative start to this year came as a surprise to most investors as we came into the new year with the usual euphoria and expectations of a stock market ending 2014 up 10-15% and a Europe and US in continued recovery but January soon became all about a potential EM crisis which ended up hurting even developed markets return in this year first month. […]
Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., the world’s most profitable lender, said it will consider acquisitions in the Middle East as part of plans to boost earnings from the region by 50 percent this year. “We’re looking to see if there are acquisition opportunities,” Zhou Xiaodong, chief executive officer for the Middle East, said in an interview from the lender’s Dubai offices. “It’s a good strategy. […]
